Refurbishing Vintage Car Parts | Danville, VA

The Ugly Truth About Refurbishing 50-Year-Old Car Parts

Many of you keep asking why you are not seeing updates on the Aruba Eliminator, Ghost Cat, and other well-known builds that are in process. The reason is because you would simply stop wanting to follow us if all we showed you were anodized nuts and bolts and 1,000 photos of rusted car parts that have to be disassembled, blasted in the glass-beading cabinet, cleaned, painted, and reassembled. Let alone the 30 hours that can go into cleaning one wiring harness!

We show you all of the pretty and the shiny parts. That’s the fun stuff, right?The nice fitted floor pan from Dynacorn International LLC The Muscle Car People or the dash that is freshly re-dyed with SEM Products. That’s the part you really want to see right?

Behind the scenes there are 6 employees responsible for making sure that each part is perfect down to the washer before installing it back into the chassis or storing it away until assembly begins. Door hinges, latches, locks, bolts, you name it, are all sorted into bins and taken away for anodizing, gold plating, nickel, or whatever the original part finish may have been. Dashes pads can take up to a week to refurbish. What about the heater controls or those cluster? Whew…even the little letters that use to be white, but over time have faded away from turning the A/C on and off.

Besides….how could you possibly have 50 years of memories without finger prints, and dirt. What about wiping the dash with Armour-All so you could impress your date, or later in life when the kids rode in the back seat and left their Starbursts candy wrappers in the ashtray (YES, ashtrays because remember when you had those!!). Heaven forbid we have to remember that time that grandpa burnt a hole in your seat cover with his cigar! How could you have 50 years of memories without one broke radio knob or that 8 track tape that got stuck in the dash years ago. How about that time you thought you turned into a mechanic and fixed the “broken wire”…yep, you remember because you almost caught that damn thing on fire.

So it takes patience and a lot of it, because after all….we are restoring 50 years of history. We will continune to update our amazing community about the Aruba Eliminator and other builds as we complete important milstones. Thank you for your support.

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